Skype Offers Free Calls in US and Canada During 2006
Posted on Monday, May 15, 2006 at 9:42 PM by Randall
You've probably heard of Skype. You may even be using Skype to talk to your Skype-using friends around the world for free. Skype has upped the ante by announcing that Skype users in the US and Canada can use SkypeOut to call any landline or mobile number in the USA and Canada for free. They had been charging for this. Skype says this free call program will continue at least through the end of 2006. I suspect that the increased competition from new Yahoo, AIM, and MSN VOIP-enabled instant messenger clients caused them to try this route. It's great publicity, after all. It will be interesting to see how the "big three" respond to this challenge.
All you need to take advantage of this (besides living in the US or Canada) is a free copy of Skype, a headset and microphone, and a broadband connection to the Internet.You will want to pay attention to the following note from the Skype blog, however:
Note that if you haven't bought any Skype Credit, your Skype client may still tell you something about needing to buy some before you can use SkypeOut. Just disregard that and place your call. It will work fine :) We already had this for toll-free 800 numbers where you could call them for free without actually buying any credit so we know this works. And it works on all platforms where SkypeOut is available, which at this time means Windows, Mac, Linux and Pocket PC.
Rating: 5.0
Operating System: Windows 2000+ (also
MacOS, Linux, and PocketPC)
License: Freeware
Price:
Free
Version Reviewed: 2.5 beta
Web Site: http://www.skype.com/
See
Screenshots